When you hear traditional Korean house, what do you imagine? yard and wood floors, so calm. By Korean architects IROJE KHM, uniqueness of the traditional house is presented in modern form. House in Goyang, Korea featuring traditional Korean home atmosphere in her modern designs. Two-storey building using wood and concrete base materials. Using the wide glass windows and spacious central courtyard that is characteristic of Korean traditional houses that are open. Story building of wood and there are sliding doors that go directly to the central courtyard which is hallmark of Korean homes. It is form of love for their Korean tradition in this modern house. [via]

Called Platoon Kunsthalle Gwangju, the newer building is made up of dark grey and orange cargo containers, and houses emerging art and subculture exhibitions as well as an event hall and bar.

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This beautiful new shipping container art center opening up in Seoul and it has a sister structure in Gwangju that rivals both its cool factor and creative contribution to the Korean community.

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Platoon, a rather mysterious creative consulting agency based out of Berlin and Seoul, conceived the Gwangju center as an industrial, wide open space with plenty of room to display art.

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The use of shipping containers arranged in a rectangle allowed them to achieve that cavernous area in the middle of the center, which opens up onto both the first and second floors giving it an even more grand feeling.

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As a social sculpture the art is created by the existence of this venue and its interaction with the people. It is not a white cube to display finished art pieces of international artists for mere consumption. Cultural development will be experienced by new art strategies which pose questions of contemporary life and a global society.

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Kunsthalle Gwangju will invite Korean, Asian and global artists to perform interaction art and develop new local aspects according to the city and citizens of Gwangju.

Designed by Lee Sang Ho who wes graduated from Busan, South Korea, the Vertical Spiral Tower will serve as the “green energy landmark tower” for the city of Busan. This skyscraper will be generate energy through several means, including the rotation of solar energy panels that will move throughout the day to capture the maximum sunlight in the day.

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The building will have an observation deck from which to admire the ocean views. The tower is split into three sections according to use, and each section has a cafeteria to accommodate the people working there. Spiral walkways will feature greenery, and twist throughout the building to create calming paths to lift the spirits of those inside.

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Structurally, the building is designed for maximum safety through the implementation of an outer skin made of Zn-Al type alloy to absorb impacts and vibration. Rubber is also used in construction for the same purpose.

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Busan is the second largest in Korea, and is the largest port city. It is also considered to have the second-largest solar radiation levels in the country, and the highest wind levels, making the building perfectly situated to utilize solar and wind technologies to generate energy.

Located in Suwon, Korea, the dining establishment is made of the second Boeing 747 ever made and apparently the first to be flown commercially.

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But now sits wasting away with no customers in sight. We can’t imagine why people wouldn’t be enticed to enter and eat in this historical behemoth.

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On the plane’s interior, the cockpit has been turned into a lofty seating space with a great view.

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While the restaurant apparently hasn’t been in commission for quite a while now, the tables, seats and even the typical bar trinkets remain. The plane even has what looks to be its original landing gear.

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If anybody reading this lives near Suwon and knows a thing or two about the restaurant business, please consider taking on this abandoned restaurant and whipping it back into shape.

Five architecture graduate students from Seoul, Ham Seung Pyo, Lee Doo Nam, Jeong Dae Kyo, Ngo Pham Thu Trang and Nguyen Thanh Vinh are concerned with the high rate of suicide amongst the elderly population in bustling Seoul, and cite the lack of safe access to pleasant rural scenery outside of the city as a contributing factor to the disturbing trend.

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They seek, then, to bring nature and relaxation the older populations stuck inside the city, by creating an opening, inviting green space for everyone to enjoy. They have designed a Seoul skyscraper that is solely devoted to nature and recreation.

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To fit so much green space in a packed city is a difficult task, so the group proposes orienting it vertically. The building will be the same size as Yeouido Park, one of the city’s most popular and central open urban spaces, but that total mass will be achieved by chopping up the size of the park into 60 segments and then stacking them into skyscraper form.

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To further connect the building with nature and relieve the stereotype of skyscrapers as cold, metal masses, the building’s color scheme will change and blend with the changing seasons. Technically, the building is designed to support green life through light pipes that can direct sunlight from the outside to the middle of the building. Rainwater is recycled to feed the greenery, and the air is naturally purified through the ample vegetation.

The treehouse like space was erected for the community with everything from a bicycle rental shop, a children’s jeongja (play pavilion), a vegetable garden, recycling workshops, a green house, community gardens and a tea room.

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But the coolest part of this all by far is the fact that it was made by the community too! That’s right, over 200 residents of Anyang pitched in to actually build the structure piece by piece.

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Designed by raumlaborkorea, Open House is an exciting new vertical village with five levels and 20 mini house shaped rooms and nestled amongst the trees in Anyang, Korea. Raumlaborkorea’s intention was for the village to keep growing and evolving over the years in response to the needs of Anyang as a type of social sculpture.

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While it may appear to be just a building on the outside, Open House is really a self-learning laboratory, constantly in creation and transformation for the collective research of the open community.

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In addition to the community-run greenhouse, Open House will have many programmed spaces including the Open House Real Estate office, anchae (a women’s conversation room called a Room of One’s Own), an artist studio and workshop, a bar, a teahouse, jeonggas, a kitchen, a farm and more.

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Each of these areas is open for the public to use and enjoy workshops, film screenings, performances, concerts, parties and art exhibitions.

Four master’s students at Kookmin University in Seoul, South Korea has envisioned a structure that functions as an oasis in the dense desert by appealing very specifically to the human senses.

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Kim Kyung-hwan, Bae Sung-eun, Jang In-chul and Park Jong-bin have designed an “Urban Oasis” that addresses each of the human senses in a calming way so as to enable rest and relaxation by virtue of being and near the structure.

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Wide open spaces relieves stress on the eyes, quiet, natural areas appeal to the ears, organic fruits and vegetables available on site enliven taste buds, the fresh smell of natural space clears the mind via the nose, and the community within the building and their collective warmth brings comfort through the sense of touch.

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All of these elements are brought to life vertically, of course the structure has been designed to accommodate trees and vegetation within polygonal pods stacked onto each other in a tall tower.

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By encompassing nature into a modern structure, these four students have designed a building that energizes and comforts the overstressed city dweller.

Seoul based Unsangdong Architects created the winning proposal, named Culture Forest, which boasts sustainable architecture, lots of trees and vegetation, and is powered by the sun. A circulating set of walkways within the building form an undulating landscape that creates an inviting atmosphere and a rich cultural program.

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The form of the building was adapted from a square volume, with sheared levels and holes replaced with green spaces. These green spaces are exposed to the outdoors and create an open circulation plan around the building’s interior program.

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Culture Forest is like an urban park wrapped up inside of a building with benches, trees, lush vegetation, and places to relax and reflect while looking down at the city. The sun will permeate these green holes and push its way into the building to provide natural lighting.

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Inside, the culture and art center features a dramatic wine-colored Flying Theater composed of geometric shapes to enhance acoustics.

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The center will also provide library programs for residents in addition to concerts, children’s playing areas, and programming that encourages eco-friendly and healthy living.

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The roof of the building will feature a tree-filled courtyard and will be covered in solar panels to provide renewable energy for the center.

The awad winning architectural firm REX designed a residential complex in Songdo Landmark City, Korea in which every apartment offers direct southern exposure, cross ventilation, and views. However, Korean zoning guidelines and local building practices typically produce towers that fail to provide these three locally prized amenities. Furthermore, prevailing site strategies carve up the open space such that the result is not the often advertised “Towers in a Park,” but anemic “Towers in a Yard” instead.

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Block A4 challenges conventional Korean development practices to provide the three key amenities within each unit and a true publicly accessible park at grade. Korean towers typically have four or more units per floor. As a result, many apartments have limited direct light, no southern exposure and poor cross ventilation. By splitting a single tower with four units per floor into four separate towers with only one unit per floor, the resulting super slim building type.

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The façade is designed to combine flexibility with a consistent image. Depending on the preferences of individual apartment owners, any given façade opening can be finished as a floor-to-ceiling window, an open-air balcony, with the use of a specially designed manually operable window interior living space during cold months and a balcony during warm months.

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By organizing the landscape at grade into a series of continuous bands, SLC Block A4 presents an alternative site strategy that will provide an open, active, pedestrian-friendly park. All vehicle access and parking is placed below grade, and the towers are sited within the parking grid.

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At ground level, the towers create a diverse hierarchy of open spaces. The primary pedestrian routes are consolidated into only four hardscape paths, avoiding a patchwork that would, on a site of this size, disperse and diffuse activity and divide up the green space.

New futuristic bridge wiil be built in Soul, Korea by Planning Korea firm. It will be named Paik Nam June Media Bridge that based from world famous video/media artist Nam June Paik.

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The futuristic 1080m megastructure would serve as a park, meeting space, mall, museum and more. In addition to adding new green space to the city, the whole bridge would be covered with solar panels to generate its own energy.

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The bridge would connect the Dangi li Power Plant site which is in the works to be redeveloped into public cultural space in the north to the National Assembly Building in the south, while creating its own mini city along the way.

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Inspired by the water strider, the bridge’s overall shape is organic, fluid and streamlined.

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Horizontal and vertical gardens would be introduced on each floor and would be watered using river and rainwater. In addition to collecting solar energy via PV panels, the skin of the bridge can be used as a canvas to showcase video installations and other media.

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While the bridge can be traversed by car, it is also meant to encourage people to use cleaner forms of transportation. Programs such as a public museum, a library and an IT complex mall showcasing the foremost IT technology that a little odd, but cool nonetheless along the bridge are all great reasons for people to ditch their cars and walk or bike across instead.